


ocean under the moon

by owlinaminor



Category: 1917 (Movie 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drinking, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:21:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23114611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/pseuds/owlinaminor
Summary: Tom serenades Will withSmoothby Santana featuring Rob Thomas.
Relationships: Tom Blake/William Schofield
Comments: 9
Kudos: 75





	ocean under the moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tomandcherry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomandcherry/gifts).



> sometimes self-care is writing about characters you love doing drunken karaoke.
> 
> dedicated to [alice](https://alicefelldowntheh0le.tumblr.com/) who is an enabler of unprecedented power. secondarily dedicated to the half-full bottle of costco sangria i found in my fridge.
> 
> no betas barely proofread we die like men.

“Hey, Will,” Tom says.

Well, perhaps _says_ is a generous description. Tom slurs the words into Will’s shoulder, his lips brushing hot against Will’s skin, and Will translates them more by touch than by sound, so used at this point to _hey, will_ soft, and intent, and all shades in between.

“Yeah?” he replies, shifting his position on the bench so that Tom can sit up a little further. The receptionist at the karaoke place probably knows they’re drunk—it’s two in the morning on a Saturday, of course they’re drunk—but she doesn’t need to know that they’re _wasted._ Or that Tom is, anyway, he’s had three shots of tequila and Will’s been chugging water because God knows _someone_ will need to get them home.

Tom, of course, doesn’t follow his cue—slumps further down against Will’s side, to the point where Will has to hoist him up with an arm ‘round his shoulders.

“Tom,” Will says, turning to look at him.

Tom blinks up at Will. And fuck, his eyes are blue. Will knows this, right, knows perpetually that Tom’s eyes are blue, keeps the fact tucked in his back pocket with his wallet and his keys, but he forgets the precise shade—his mind can’t quite hold onto it, can’t quite process something so brilliant, like Tom’s eyes are the truest blue, the first blue, and all other shades of blue out there in the world are just cheap knock-offs.

And, okay, maybe he’s drunker than he thought, because the receptionist has been calling his name at an increasing volume for the past minute.

“Yes!” Will says. He stumbles to his feet and pulls Tom with him—Tom takes a moment to find his footing, which is just fine because Will is also taking a moment to find his footing, both of them like baby colts or freshmen after their first kegger, and then finally they’re half at attention, half leaning on each other.

“It’s your turn,” the receptionist says, blinking at the pair of them from behind angular glasses. “Room six. One hour, your first two drinks are included as long as they’re not cocktails, after that it’s added to your tab.”

Will nods, hoping he’s doing an adequate impression of Boy Capable of Understanding Language.

Tom calls out a, “Thank you!” and drags Will in the direction of the private rooms. He pushes open their door, a shiny, well-oiled thing with _SIX_ emblazoned above the handle in neon pink, and practically falls inside. Will follows and takes his bearings: reddish-pink walls, low lighting along the sides of the room and outlining the door, squat almost antique-looking television at the front, tiny wooden side tables with remotes and mics on either end, and a low, black leather couch stretching across the back. It’s big enough for four people, maybe even six, but Tom fills the space like he always does, plopping down in the center of the couch and stretching both his arms out across the backs. It’s his room now. All rooms are Tom’s rooms, really—he commands them like this, by falling and stretching and grinning, except that this grin isn’t conquering the world it’s just aimed at Will, and Will is so hot suddenly under his windbreaker, like he downed two more drinks just walking in this door.

“Come on,” Tom says. “Sixty minutes. Let’s go.”

Will goes—of course he goes, sits on the couch next to Tom and watches transfixed as Tom rifles through the drink menu, orders them a beer each on the intercom tucked into a little pocket on the side of the couch, and examines the screen. Tom was all fluid motion a minute ago but give him a challenge, give him a mission or drinks to order, and suddenly he’s back. Solid, steady, turning to Will with a gleam in his eyes Will recognizes even in the low light.

“D’you know what you wanna sing?” he asks.

Will thinks about it. He knew—okay, he had the whole train ride up here from the pub plus the walk plus the wait to pick a song, but he was distracted, alright, there were blue eyes involved, and Tom’s just starting to get freckles across the bridge of his nose from the springtime sun, can you _blame_ him—

“I’ll go first, then,” Tom says.

He rifles through a songbook for a moment, then grabs a remote and switches on the television. “Don’t look,” he tells Will, so Will puts a hand over his eyes and just breathes for a minute, in and out, tries to itemize how they’ll get home and what kind of sandwich he’ll order from the late-night deli and how much water he’ll make Tom drink back at the apartment and—

A familiar guitar riff plays over tinny speakers, cut through with Tom’s vocalizing. _Bada da da DA—_

It couldn’t be. Could it? No, _could it?_

Will opens his eyes.

Tom is standing in front of the television, his legs splayed wide at such an angle that Will’s afraid he’ll fall. He’s got a mic in one hand and he’s staring at Will, this incredible look on his face like he’s about to reinvent gravity, like all the planets in all the solar systems are converging on a single point and this point is _here, now,_ it is—

_“Man, it’s a hot one. Like seven inches from the midday sun.”_

The lyrics scroll on the screen behind Tom, a bright blue background like a 90s Windows screensaver with orange text overlaid, but Tom isn’t looking at them as he sings, his voice scratchy but still in-tune. Of course he isn’t looking at them. Tom sings this song every week, blasts it when he’s doing the dishes or dances around to it in his underwear when he wants to distract Will from his thesis, but it’s different like this. Like this: Tom in a dimly lit room in the cheapest karaoke place they could find, in his tightest jeans and an old T-shirt of Will’s that he’s stretched beyond repair, overexaggerating each word and fucking _gyrating_ his hips as he sings.

_“You’re my reason for reason, the step in my groove.”_

Will knows his face is probably doing something ridiculous right now. He should school it, should get his lines and angles back in order, but how—he can’t spare focus for anything but this. This, Tom—Tom coming closer now as he hits the chorus, stepping almost into the space between Will’s legs and bringing the mic so close to his lips it finds static.

_“And if you say this life ain't good enough, I would give my world to lift you up.”_

Tom’s lips, Tom’s lips are mesmerizing. Tom fills spaces, he fills rooms and streets and battlefields, and the way he fills this karaoke room—this space tiny and growing smaller—is by opening his mouth, forming each word precise and giving it weight. Will can almost hear his tongue meet teeth— _lift you up—suit your mood—_ and can barely breathe for a moment just remembering how he knows that tongue, how he knows Tom loud and hot and deep.

_“And it's just like the ocean under the moon, it's the same as the emotion that I get from you.”_

And that’s it, right? That’s the song. The ocean under the moon, the tides and the turning of the earth. The creation of gravity and the bodies it pulls. Because what is gravity if not one long pull—a hand tugging you out onto the dance floor, a voice whispering in your ear. What is gravity if not this—Tom keeping one hand on the mic, reaching the other out to take Will’s—to grip his palm and pull him up in one smooth motion. To pull, to pull close, to pull closer.

_“You got the kind of loving that can be so smooth, gimme your heart, make it real, or else forget about it.”_

Tom moves in again now, moves into the space between Will’s legs—Will opens for him easily, always has. Will is a planet, Tom’s the sun. Or Will’s a solar system, Tom’s the whole damn galaxy, and Tom puts his free hand on Will’s hip now, his fingers splayed wide, and Will leans his head back and lets himself be held.

_“I’ll tell you one thing, if you would leave it’d be a crying shame.”_

Will stops hearing words, stops being able to process words really, can only hear the sounds, the vibrations echoing from Tom to the mic and the mic to the speaker by the television and the speaker by the television back to Will. They don’t have far to travel, these vibrations. Only half a meter, maybe, the space between two heartbeats. Nothing compared to the earth’s rotation, the sun’s. Will closes his eyes, but then the world goes too hazy and he doesn’t want to miss any of this, so he opens and looks at Tom.

_“From the barrio, you hear my rhythm from your radio—"_

Tom is close and warm and bright, even in this karaoke room. He’d be bright in a cave a thousand meters down, Will thinks. He’d be bright in a black hole. Will drops his head to Tom’s shoulder, blinded, but then he has to look, he has to, he’ll die if he don’t, he’ll melt into a puddle right here on the linoleum. And Tom looks at him, Tom keeps singing.

_“You feel the turning of the world, so soft and slow—”_

This line is soft, maybe a little off-tempo, Tom’s voice going husky like he’s thinking of their bed back at the apartment with the thin sheets and the moonlight dancing in from the window and Will—Will can’t stand this. He needs to be closer. He leans in—cuts off the vibrations—and kisses Tom right in the middle of a vowel, his lips already open and ready.

Tom has stopped singing by the time the instrumental hits.

The next morning, Will opens his eyes to blinding sunlight and a sweet, legato melody stuck in his head.

He sits up—tries to ignore the lurch in his stomach—and stares down at Tom, a mess of curls against the other pillow.

“Tom,” he says. And then again, nudging Tom’s shoulder. _“Tom.”_

Tom shifts, rolling over onto his back and blinking one eye open—and yeah, okay, maybe Will is distracted for a moment by the plane of his nose, the shape of his lips, the blue of his eyes, the way the sunlight falls across his cheeks, the _freckles—_ but then he gets ahold of himself.

“Tom,” Will says. “Did you serenade me with _Smooth_ last night, or did my drunk brain invent that?”

Tom opens both eyes, grins brighter than the sun outside, and starts to sing—

_“Man, it’s a hot one—"_

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/owlinaminor) / [tumblr](https://owlinaminor.tumblr.com/) / [very good t-shirt](https://twitter.com/owlinaminor/status/1192294555200217088)


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